Meryl Streep might not be the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, but she is a national treasure, and seeing as how today is her 63rd birthday, it seemed like as good a time as any to take a look back on how bangin she looked in high school. I love her acting ability AND her healthy-looking legs (that’s important). Also relevant, her thoughts on the modern movie industry from her 60 Minutes profile last month:
SAFER: Do you think movies are getting better than when you started?
STREEP: I think the acting’s better. I think the acting is better than in the “classic” days, frankly.
SAFER: If you look at the movies that are being made, the big movies that are being made, are… about comic strips–
STREEP: Oh I don’t see those.
SAFER: –or vampires, or gross behavior – all aimed at 18-year-old boys.
STREEP: That’s called the narrowing of the audience. The movie business has worked assiduously to discourage you, and other intelligent, discerning people, FROM the theater. They have worked hard to get rid of you, because you don’t go and then buy toys and games.
I loved The Avengers as much as the next nerdy blogadouche, but I get excited pretty much every time an actress gives an interview where she isn’t all, “Waaaah, I used to be so awkward!” Yeah, it’s called adolescence, bitch, for some of us it lasts a lifetime.
Mmm, pearls. This is what chicks from Jersey looked like in the sixties. I can’t help but think we’ve gone backwards as a society. Or at least that New Jersey has.
Draaaaama club! The guy behind Meryl would later be the subject of the country’s first restraining order.
The pretty ones don’t have to wear costumes.
See? I told you about the legs.
If there’s a lesson here, kids, it’s that you shouldn’t be afraid to dream big, provided you’re a ridiculously photogenic homecoming queen with an MFA in drama from Yale. Meanwhile, if movies have taught us anything, it’s that she probably got to be so popular by being super bitchy to everyone.
[via 60 Minutes and TresSugar]